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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 16:32:51 JST Adrianna Tan

   I’m going to learn Spanish. I don’t think it’s possible to live where I live, in this time, without participating in a world that is rich, vibrant, joyful, Indigenous, wonderful and welcoming. All of my favorite parts of living in California have been centered on what little I have experienced of Mexican, Salvadoran, Honduran and other cultures.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 16:43:50 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • ineffective altruist

     @tsvga it’s never been useful for any language, I find

   • Embed this notice
     ineffective altruist (tsvga@ni.hil.ist)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 16:43:51 JST ineffective altruist

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte just a heads up, don't use Duolingo, it's vibe-coded and sucks now and the owl emotionally blackmails you

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 16:50:38 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • ineffective altruist

     @tsvga the way it’s set up (even before they got worse) doesn’t really make for useful language acquisition. Mango languages and Pimsleur are way better

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     ineffective altruist (tsvga@ni.hil.ist)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 16:50:39 JST ineffective altruist

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I haven't used it much but Esperanto speakers have told me it's really gone downhill since they started vibe-coding

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 16:52:19 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     I get to speak 3 of my other non-English regularly where I live, which is pretty much the only thing that keeps me in a good place. I get to access so much more of this country and the people in it.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 17:00:43 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Marcin Cieślak

     @saper unlike that situation, Spanish is spoken by millions of people where I live, so I think it’ll be immersive

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     Marcin Cieślak (saper@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 17:00:44 JST Marcin Cieślak

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte if that is of any consolation , I worked with someone who spoke perfect accent-free English and has never been outside of #Kazakhstan

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 17:10:46 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     My wife is doing her Masters thesis on immigrant grief.

     For me, language is part of it. I am a native speaker of English, but my modes for love, warmth, food, hearth and home are also in the other languages that I speak. I am a different person in each language. I experience the same places differently in each language.

     A few days ago, planted face down on an acupuncture bed in Oakland, learning that I can speak about my body and its aches in Mandarin just like I used to in Bukit Timah.

     Today, my neighbor told me in Teochew that she was going on vacation for the first time in decades. Everyone else in the building just sees her as a ‘poor English speaker’. I see her as the kind grandma who reminds me to celebrate festivals I don’t actually celebrate. (She’s Vietnamese: and she thinks we have the same holidays. There are overlaps)

     Then we went to our favorite restaurant in San Francisco, where nearly everyone spoke Tamil. I don’t really speak Tamil at all, but my grandparents did, with our neighbors, and I understand it better than I speak. I know all of the food words. The Tamil lady came over and told me to buy a nicer ring for my wife because ‘we Indian women like nice rings’.

     I order Indonesian coffee down the street from Indonesian coffee roasters. I get a lemper to go, it tastes exactly like in Indonesia (just at a shocking price in rupiah). My Thai is getting rusty, but still good enough to get Thai spicy food I need. No chilli, no life.

     Whenever I can, I spend time in the Mission and in Fruitvale because I love being surrounded by Spanish and all the indigenous languages of Mexico, Guatemala and elsewhere.

     Hearing all the languages spoken including the ones I don’t speak, remind me that I am not alone.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 17:21:05 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     My wife was trying to articulate her own immigrant grief, as a southeast Asian person who grew up in Paris. She feels she has a completely different personality in French, and in Paris. In her class, she said ‘I’m a bigger bitch in Paris’

     They’ve started making tshirts of it and they wear it to class.

     I think there’s something there:

     - when I read what I write in Mandarin, I feel almost like I’m reading a different person. It’s not the same voice that I have in English. It’s also very distinct, like in English, but completely different. I am softer, and more ‘emo’ but also reserved.

     - when I speak Teochew, which I consider my ‘co-native language alongside Teochew’, I don’t need to think: words just come out and they are always right. All of the Vietnamese Chinese aunties in my neighborhood believe that I come from Swatow, actually, because I have an old woman’s Swatow accent. The accent of the 1930s Swatow that my grandparents left. It makes 70 year old Vietnamese Chinese aunties conscious about theirs.

     - my love language is Indonesian. Truly, I don’t think I can ‘feel’ as strongly as I do in Indonesian. Is it because of all the lagu galau I listen to? It makes me ‘baper

     - I don’t speak any Spanish yet, but I have a good feeling about it. I’m excited to meet the person I will become in Spanish. It’s probably someone I’ve never met before.

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     Advanced Persistent Teapot (http_error_418@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 17:26:06 JST Advanced Persistent Teapot

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte a friend of mine grew up in Texas speaking English as primary but also speaks fluent Spanish. Her English is playful, joyful, animated. When she switches to Spanish, it's mellow and honeyed, and would seduce a marble statue. It's really quite something.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 17:29:59 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     And in some weird way: my inarticulate answers to ‘why haven’t you left that place?’

     Is that

     There are not many places in the world where I can be all of those things. Some people think so, but not really, not for me specifically. I needed to come to this place because it’s the first place I’ve found, after a long time of searching, that’s let me be my autistic, queer, Singaporean, American, self, with economic and social opportunities for my precise profession. It’s the first place I’ve found that’s got radical Asian queer activism that I can be a part of. It’s where I’ve not been asked where I’m really from. It’s where most of my experience here has been additive. And yet, mourning the duality of the overall experience: no other place I want to be, right now, but it’s not easy.

     The stuff that is not easy is terrible.

     The stuff that is great is irreplaceable for me.

     My immigrant grief is also that I no longer feel like leaving is an option, because the person I am here is also a whole person now. And that person does not want to leave the things and people that I love in this place.

   • Embed this notice
     Dena (shunra@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 17:37:54 JST Dena

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte
     FWIW, a thing I read today about immigrant grief - by a local woman who moved across the pond - is staying with me.
     Perhaps you will find comfort in its familiarity, too. https://stillhungrynews.substack.com/p/notes-from-a-foreign-country

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 09-Feb-2026 17:37:54 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Dena

     @Shunra thank you!

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Feb-2026 05:12:49 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Jeff Smith

     @sumisu3 also, it will be a delicious journey

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     Jeff Smith (sumisu3@mastodon.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Feb-2026 05:12:50 JST Jeff Smith

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I’m so excited (as I’m sure others are) to follow you on this journey. The perfect place to be all these people/personalities you are, and now that will be deeply enriched by the surely multitude of Spanish variants you will learn and embrace. So cool!

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     Alexandra Magin 🏳️‍🌈 (recursive@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Feb-2026 08:18:37 JST Alexandra Magin 🏳️‍🌈

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte In completely different ways I feel "There are not many places in the world where I can be all of those things." about a certain set of places

     Heck, I even see this with people less marginalized than me. A lot of the supposedly better places in the world don't really allow for much variety of experience